The Girl with Subtle Revenges and No Tattoos

Why I like revenge thrillers! Why does anybody like revenge stories? It is very simple actually. It gives readers a sense of achievement, a contentment. There is also that justice being done angle. When a person decides to avenge the wrong doing that has been done to him, it automatically creates a goal for him, right? So when the goal is achieved everybody is happy. And that is why we watch movies, read books. We become one with the characters and start to live his or her life, his or her happiness becomes ours, his or her sorrows make us cry as our own. A fictional character’s revenge becomes my revenge. If anyone asks me what part of taking revenge I like the best, I would say the very process of taking revenge. The careful planning. And that is why I like Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander. This girl with all her tattoos and piercings is like an inspiration. Lisbeth was deprived from any normalcy since her childhood, and she had this gift, this talent that nobody understood, so nobody helped her when she could have done some good with it. Then after such ordeal that was her teen life, finally in her early twenties she managed to have some sort of respite, a system, something nearing to a normal life but again it was shattered by an incident. She got raped and brutally tortured. After the incident what does she do? She could not go to the police, she hated authority probably more than she hated her rapist, so you would expect her to at least cry her hearts out, and blame her fate maybe? Nope, after leaving her rapist’s house she bought painkillers, antibiotics. She went back to her place, took a hot shower, had few pain killers, antibiotics, and sleeping pills and slept. After sleeping for hours, she woke up and had some food. She knew that to take revenge she would need her strength back, the strength that had been taken away. But thankfully it was her physical strength that was harmed; her mind had the strength of an iron column. So she then plotted her revenge with an ice cool head. She considers pros and cons and hatched her plan to set the score right.

Yes, I like the “planning” part of taking revenge. All those minute details of a revenge plan attract me. The very process is enticing. I like planning, but do not worry I do not need to plan to avenge anything so big. Just the very idea of planning something makes me happy; in my case sadly it is almost always a get-together or a movie plan. Is it because nothing brutal ever happened to me like Lisbeth? Maybe. But things have happened to me too, silly little things. I think everybody has something no matter how small, that itch them to tread on the path of revenge. I also plan to take revenge, but luckily I think I can do that just by going on writing. I don’t need a sword, I have my pen, oh no, wait a minute( oh my god, what do I do, how do I turn this around!!) I meant to say my keyboard. I will not shed any blood, I will write my revenge in ink, (oh god, not again) I meant to say on Microsoft word! (What is happening? Is technology actually literary killing poetry of words?) Yes, after writing these few lines I am set on my goals to take revenge more than ever. I tell everybody “I am not a forgetting forgiving kind of girl”, I tell people “when I am good I am good, when I am bad I am better” (remember Demi Moore from Charlie’s Angel?). Obviously those statements are made for empty vacuous dramatic effect and let’s admit we all love creating melodrama around our life, after all we all love the idea of being the main protagonist of a novel. The women in my family especially my maternal side thrives on melodrama. So I am also no exception. But I need to start taking my revenges that are overdue for a long long time. But first I need a good cup of tea.

Post Scriptum: I wrote the above lines few weeks ago, and just today I heard somebody saying “an unforgiving person gets wrinkles early”. Just now I forgave everybody!